What does it all mean?

Bush's 'freedom doctrine' is but another secular attempt to justify a political point-of-view.

modern Western thought has been obsessed with ideology, providing a secular substitute for the interpretation of human existence previously provided by biblical religion.

European thought concluded in the 18th and 19th centuries that it was unreasonable to believe that God exists, or that human existence is, in some meaningful way, connected to a divine intelligence.

There has been plenty of progress in science, technology and human organisation and institutions since the presumed death of God more than 200 years ago. But the years since have also given us ideological totalitarianism, the two world wars and many savage smaller wars, genocide in Europe, Africa and Asia, and the war "between civilisations" that George W Bush is now pleased to call the "long war" against global terror and tyranny.

This is the recent record of human progress through reason — although some would object that it is no worse than much that preceded it. But the Age of Reason was supposed to be better. Reason and science were supposed to move steadily toward solution of the great problems of history.

The latest of these to gain international significance was, of course, the Bush "freedom doctrine", saying that everyone everywhere wants American-style democracy, and that when they have it, history will have reached its goal.

We are plausibly told by Washington, the world is only at the start of the "long war" against Evil (itself a theological reinterpretation of a political effort to control the Middle East).

As for my own view, I do not think God is dead, and I think only he knows the meaning of history. The problem for man is not to try to substitute his own for the divine intelligence.

But I doubt many are listening.



by William Pfaff
The writer is a veteran columnist on world affairs for the International Herald Tribune.